Air Quality Citizen Science Research Project in NYC

raditional approaches to air quality monitoring typically involve regulatory agencies that utilize expensive and complex stationary equipment, maintained by trained staff, to provide the type of highly accurate data needed to demonstrate attainment with federal air quality standards. While this type of monitoring is a vital component to air quality management, in urban areas these monitors are often deployed at, only, a limited number of rooftop locations. Though intended to track urban scale trends in pollution levels, the placement of these monitors is not spatially dense enough to characterize intra-urban spatial variation in air quality, due to local emissions sources such as traffic. To address this limitation, this project explored the feasibility of using stationary low-cost monitoring networks for spatial and temporal estimation of ambient fine particulate concentrations in two environmental justice communities in New York City – El Puente (Brooklyn) and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice (the Bronx).